It's not, by the way, a happy situation to be in. We spend an awful lot of time looking for things that we've dropped God knows where, and the mess bothers us ... to say nothing of the strife it causes with the local Institution of Marriage.

Last week, when the IoM took off for a holiday, we knew that the normal pattern would run something like this: we'd accumulate enough debris in a few days to turn the place into a junk heap, and we'd end up feeling out of control and helpless.

Instead we vowed to change our ways. We forced ourselves to make the bed every morning. We cleaned benches and washed up. If we got something out of a cupboard, we put it back. We did all the laundry, and did all the folding and ironing.

Then we started looking for other things that had been annoying us. We straightened out the tangle of cords and cables in the hi-fi cabinet. We started doing the same thing in the office - although that's going to take a lot more time to complete.

Six days after the IOM departed, the house is as tidy as -if not more tidy than - it was when she left. We're beginning to think that we may have overcome a bad habit.